Responsibility Junkie

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Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart discusses the challenges of filling big shoes and managing a team whose members all aspire to be number one.

As conductor of “America’s Orchestra,” the Boston Pops, for the past 12 years, Keith Lockhart has conducted more than 900 concerts in the United States and overseas, in addition to serving as music director of the Utah Symphony. Lockhart recently spoke with Glenn Mangurian, an executive in residence at the University of Massachusetts, as part of the university’s Uncommon Leadership breakfast series. In this edited conversation, Lockhart discusses the challenges of taking the helm of a century-old institution.

You’ve been in this job for more than a decade, but people still often think of you as the new conductor. When will that change?

In Boston, it takes about 100 years not to be the new person. Seriously, the challenge is not so much in becoming established as the conductor of the Boston Pops, but in following the legacy of a person whom people in Boston know of even if they were born after he died: Arthur Fiedler. Fiedler died in his 50th year at the helm. When he died, his name was inextricably linked to the Pops. The Pops knew that it would be difficult to appoint a new conductor without everyone saying, “Hah, but he’s not Arthur Fiedler.” So in 1980, after Fiedler died, they recruited somebody whose fame was already established for doing something completely different: John Williams, who was famous for composing the Star Wars score three years earlier. After 13 years of Maestro Williams’s tenure, the Pops felt it was safe to bring in somebody whose name and fame would be bound together with the institution’s.

What did you do to make the Pops yours?

The best advice about that actually came from John Williams. I had dinner with him the night before it was announced that I’d be the new conductor, February 5, 1995. He said, “People here love the Boston Pops, they love the institution. It’s not about you. Just be a caring steward of the institution; show that you love the Pops and they will love you because of that. You don’t have to worry about making it your own institution.”

Leading musicians presents some unusual challenges.

Most concert musicians had “the dream.” Most everyone in the violin section thought they’d be the one playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto in front of the orchestra, leading it with their artistic impulses. Few of them dreamed about being a person who takes orders. But in any organization, if there are no people who are followers, you’ve got a situation.

How does the conductor empower everybody while still creating a musical collaboration that works? The key in my experience is to make the musicians feel invested in your decisions—so that they own them, too. That’s not always easy. For example, if a bassoonist has a solo in the middle of a piece and you say, “Well, I really don’t like where that’s going”—how do you get that musician to buy into your idea? Unlike most businesses, you don’t have the luxury of having a private office in which to talk these things through. Rather, in real time, you’re criticizing this person in front of 85 of his or her peers. It can be humiliating, and others can become defensive on their colleague’s behalf. So, even though you have formal authority as the conductor, if you haven’t built support from the ground up at the start, you’ll be in trouble.

How do you build that sort of support?

That comes in part from being someone who can be absolutely trusted and relied upon. I’ve had air-raid sirens go off during concerts, blackouts, rainstorms postponing outdoor televised performances. In situations like that, people ask, “What does Keith want to do?” And if I can take charge and come through for them in a crisis, that goes a long way. Even when things are going smoothly, every player is relying on you. A violinist may seem buried in the sheet music. But she knows exactly when she needs to look up for guidance. I’d better be there, as I used to tell my students in my conducting classes: If you sometimes think you’re peripheral, just make a mistake, because the moment you do, you’ll get 80 pairs of eyes glaring at you.

People assume that when you become a conductor you’re into some sort of a Napoleonic thing—that you want to stand on that big box and wield your power. I’m not a power junkie, I’m a responsibility junkie. If I were in it for the power, I don’t think I could get the orchestra to follow me anywhere.

Glenn E. Mangurian (gmangurian@frontierworks.com) is a cofounder of FrontierWorks, a management-consulting firm based in Hingham, Massachusetts. He was previously a senior vice president at CSC Index in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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